Maybe that happened with Linux, but it took a very long time (as measured in computer time, since it's only been a little over 10 years now).
and extrapolate from that what you will. IE, it's taken Linux a long time to build up marketing steam; it could've gone faster had Linus actually marketed the kernel (of course, he wrote it originally just for his own use, not to take over the world, so of course he didn't do any marketing); Linux was a bit of a fluke, since I doubt you can really come up with another such example in the computing world; or any other conclusion you wish to draw.
Marketing isn't a silver bullet, of course. Just because you take the time to evangelize your work doesn't mean anybody's going to buy into it. But not evangelizing (note that, as other posters have pointed out, marketing is a whole lot more than just buying advertisements, and I think evangelizing is a good word to cover more of this because it includes things like helping our your developer community and just generally making sure people know what cool stuff you're doing) is a very good way to not go anywhere.
I believe they're planning on distributors to handle their own marketing. Similar to Linux - the marketing for Linux is being done by IBM, RedHat, Mandrake and other distros instead of Linus and the development team.
And yet, that doesn't decrease or remove the need for marketing. Instead, it simply changes who your marketing is targetting. Do you think distributions of OpenBeOS will just appear? Maybe that happened with Linux, but it took a very long time (as measured in computer time, since it's only been a little over 10 years now). No, if the OBOS team wants their software to be used, then they will need to either distribute it themselves (market to end users), or actively find others to distribute it for them (market to VARs). If they do neither, then OBOS will die. And maybe that's fine, because perhaps they're just doing this for fun and their own personal use and it doesn't really matter to them whether or not others use their software.
Interesting claim. Why do you say this? Are concepts of system security, system availability, and admin responsiveness not universal?
Of course the concepts and theory that make a good admin are universal. However, 90% of running a system is hands-on work (quick fixes, kludges, and hacks to keep the system up and running without munging it up too much, and then doing things the "Right Way" (tm) when you finally get the time). That's where the difference comes in. Just to illustrate the difference, let's examine how you'd push a security patch to 100 nodes in a network. With Unix, that's easy -- just write a script that goes through each host, making an ssh connection that runs another script to load the patch. Now, how do you do this on Windows? Your typical Unix admin will do one of two things when presented with this problem on a Windows-based network.
The admin will go to each and every computer and run the patch there. This is highly inefficient, and prone to error (you're sure you got all the machines?).
Start turning Windows into Unix. The admin will install bash, perl, ssh, etc until he can use the same method as above -- write a shell script that runs through each machine making an ssh connection that calls a script to load the patch. Of course, now you've got a whole lot of non-essential software on (possibly) production servers. That software could have security holes (ssh), or be untested on your certain configuration of hardware, or introduce software conflicts, or cause any one of several hundred different problems.
The thing is, there is a solution to this problem that combines the elegance of the Unix-style solution with the stability (ie, not screwing around with your software configuration) of the first option. Simply write a vbscript or jscript that uses WMI (Windows Management Interface) to connect to each remote machine, copy over the patch, and run it. WMI is native to Windows, so you're not adding extra software, and it was designed specificially for these types of administrative tasks.
The above example may be contrived, but the point is that the Unix admin wouldn't know the tricks of the trade for administering a Windows server. Conversely, your average Windows admin will be lost when delving into bash, perl, sed, awk, and the myriad of other small scriptable apps. (Not saying that most Windows admins are not good at scripting, just that vbscript/jscript/command script are different from bash/perl/sed/awk/tcl)
I claim that a good admin is a good admin, period. If the admin is dependent on the system he administers and incapable of adjusting to new/different circumstances, then the admin is faulty and should be replaced.
If you're able to afford an admin that is proficient with any system you give him, then more power to you. Those types are worth their weight in gold. For the rest of the world that either can't afford such talent or came late to the party and can't find such talent, you take what you can get. And I find it pretty short-sighted to say that an admin is faulty if he's targetted a certain platform. He may have all the theory behind proper administration down just fine, but when it comes to putting food on the table you have to make a decision and pick a platform (or two, or five, but rarely will you be able to be instantly proficient with everything).
-Every single one of the W2K boxes have had to been rebuilt at least once in the last 2 years
-Three of the boxes have had been rebuilt 3 or more times in this same time period
-The record uptime for our W2K servers is 3 months
-Four of the servers have outright locked up and stopped responding even to ping packets
In short, you don't have a qualified Windows administrator on your staff. Yes, there is a difference. A Unix admin does not necessarily make a good Windows admin, and vice versa.
-The only time these servers have EVER gone down was once because lightning melted down a power substation that feeds our building and our battery backups didn't last long enough. Now that we have a diesel generator that can power us for days, we don't anticipate these servers to ever go down again
So, what's your URL again? Your system is most likely quite vulnerable, security-wise. No, rebooting does not equal security, nor is it necessary to reboot for many security fixes. However, there have been a number of holes fixed in the kernel itself over the past year or two, and you do have to reboot for that. And if you're not staying on top of your kernel security updates, are you sure you're staying on top of your other security updates as well... ?
They might know one of them. It's better to use something there are standards for. It's better to separate data storage from data manipulation. Just because Java isn't a very good language for handling data, or perl may not have the prettiest syntax doesn't mean you should try some archaic proprietary obscure weak scripting language that is compiled into the database. Someday there will be a decent API for data manipulation, and it's going to be through mysql if it ever comes.
Sure, you'll believe that up until the point where MySQL finally hacks SQL-based sprocs into their little database, and then you'll love it. You might want to sync up with the MySQL dev team, so that you'll know when they're ready to implement SQL-based sprocs so you can change your argument.
Transactions shouldn't be built into the database either. There should be a transparent API (that maybe uses temporary tables for temporary storage), but transactions as they exist in Oracle or a huge waste of memory, and suprize! -- one of the biggest failure points for data corruption.
First off, let's just throw away 20+ years of database research (both academic and commercial from places like Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft). Obviously you know better, it seems. However, that aside, of course most transaction implementations "waste memory" (if you're going to be running a serious database, you won't have any problems getting 2 or 3GB of RAM). That memory they "waste" is used basically as a scratch space. All data manipulations are done there, so that when you get that commit tran call it can all be written to disk. Or just as easily thrown away when you have to rollback tran. Yes, that can get nasty when you're doing large updates, or have a long transaction. That's the point where it helps to understand how the database you're using actually works, because then you can work on making your code perform better. As far as transactions causing data corruption... well, not that I've seen. Maybe with MySQL, because their transaction support is just a hack, and it's still pretty flakey and new. I wouldn't judge transactions in any other real RDBMS by MySQL's transactions.
And you of course, oh holier than thou one, have never spoken to a passenger whilst driving. It's the same thing. If the phone's in a _proper_ handsfree kit, there's no issue.
No, it's not. Not even close. With a passenger in the car, he or she has the same view of the road as the driver. Therefore, if a situation arises where the driver needs full concentration (and you'd be surprised how often this happens, what with soccer moms in their oversized SUVs and idiots talking on their phones...), the passenger can shut up. The person on the other end of the phone has no clue, and will just continue to babble on and on, distracting the driver and causing a dangerous situation. There's more to driving than just having your hands free for the wheel and shifter (if necessary). To be a good driver, you must have situational awareness. You need to not only know where the other drivers are on the road in relation to your car, but you also need to be able to anticipate what they're going to do. How can you do that if you're chatting up somebody on the phone, talking about where to go to dinner or what movie to see later? Simple -- you can't. Anybody who says you can is either an idiot or a liar.
Don't get me wrong. I don't subscribe to the Liberal battlecry of "There should be a law!" I'm not saying there should be a law against talking on a phone while driving (although there already are such laws in some areas). All I'm saying is that for your own safety and mine, please keep the phone conversations to non-moving situations please.
That's all well and good (and, based on the picture, a hell of a lot sexier than the Treo's that are running around my office now), but what they need to fix (before adding all the bells and whistles) is the fact that I can't drive from work to home and talk to my brother on the phone for 30 minutes without getting dropped during the handoff between cell towers.
That's a feature, not a problem. When you're driving, pay attention to driving. Stay off the goddamned phone. If you want to talk to your brother, call him before you leave work. Then go drive home. Then call him again if you must. But for the sake of the other drivers that need to share the road with you, leave the damned phone off while you're driving.
I don't care if you use a hands-free set, you're still gabbing on the phone when you should be paying attention to what you're doing on the road. When you're driving, you're in possession of a 3000lb bullet. Please act accordingly. And don't give me excuses like, "But I've been doing this for years!" or, "I'm a good driver, so I don't have to pay attention to the road." That's crap, and both you and I know it.
Go update your drivers. Your system should be able to handle at least fullscreen 1024x768x32 Geiss or Whitecap or other 3D visualizations. Also, if you're talking about AVS, try not using the transparency option (that takes computing power, though if you've updated your drivers, the alpha blending should be handled mostly in hardware anyway).
Please don't make the assumption that Windows is the reason your system is slow with graphically intense applications. Most visualizations are not a whole lot of computation (Winamp pre-calculates the fourier transforms on the dataset sent to vis plugins, so the plugins themselves need not do so).
I often go the upgrade route - upgrade a few components at a time until I eventually end up with two functioning machines. This is not cheaper than buying a new Dell (or whatever) but it does spread the cost out. Obviously it doesn't work if you need two machines now.
This is exactly what I do, as well. My latest machine (working as a dhcpd and nat router for an internal wireless LAN) is nearly all "recycled" parts. Other than the RAM, case, and floppy, everything in the computer is left over from upgrades. Works out very well, and at the rate I upgrade I usually end up with another PC every 1.5 years.
Server class machines are never cheaper from the likes of Dell, Compaq, IBM etc. You can often save a bundle building one from components. Provided you're willing to give up the easy warranty of course.
I couldn't imagine anybody running a serious service would actually want to build their own machines. It's too much work, and you give up your support agreement. Obviously, if you need big iron, then you have some form of income to pay for it (or if not, it'll eventually get sold at auction when you buckle). Sure, it's possible to build server-level PCs (Supermicro makes some awesome cases -- I use the old SC750A full tower just for a personal machine, but it could be considered a small server case), but most companies want that support contract. That way, when you lose a drive in your RAID array, or a controller burns out, or a CPU gets fried, or whatever, it's all covered (yeah, yeah, you pay for it in the price of the service agreement, but you get a lot more than just replacement parts with a service agreement, as well).
Building your own PC is not always the least expensive proposition. Most configurable, yes, but not least expensive. For starters, all of the prebuilt PC manufacturers get huge bulk discounts. If you want to go buy that P4, it may cost you well over $400 or even $500. These guys can buy in bulks of 10,000 or more, which means significant price drops. Same for the motherboards, cases, power supplies, RAM,... You're not going to be able to match the prices these companies can get. On top of that, if you're building your own PC, you're probably going to want to put quality parts in it. Don't expect that from a prebuilt company. They skimp where they can (weaker powersupply, flimsy case, off-brand sound card, etc) so they can pass the savings on to you while still making some sort of profit. Nevermind the software you have to buy (assuming you want to run Windows or some other commercial OS and don't wish to steal it). You can sometimes get the OEM discounts on the software if you buy it in conjunction with a mobo or hard drive, but not always.
In short, if price is a concern, don't build it yourself. Oh, sure, with a little due dilligence you can keep the price down. It's just been my experience that that doesn't happen. If you're pinching pennies, buy from a respectable name brand. If you want the ultimate in configuration (and don't mind having no computer-wide warranty support), then build it yourself.
So basically, love it or leave it? I'm sorry, but I believe in a third option -- constructive criticism. And that's exactly what I gave. Too bad the editors will likely never see it. As I said, I feel there's definitely something worth saving in Slashdot, and you can't honestly believe that the changes I suggested wouldn't be better than what you currently get. I'm fine with Slashdot editorializing, and I know there are obvious biases. However, there is a time and place for those. There was absolutely no reason for the underhanded dig in this story. If Slashdot wants to run an editorial (user-submitted or otherwise) about what's wrong with Microsoft (or the RIAA/MPAA, or the government, or whatever), great. That's an editorial. It's supposed to have bias. This was presented as a news item ("Hey, look! Neat article. Oh, and since the article does cast Microsoft in a somewhat favorable light, here's a completely unrelated dig to fulfill the status quo,"). As such, it is the Slashdot editors' editorial duty to lose the troll and present the news.
Dissenting viewpoints are what can turn an only decent community into a truly great one. If everybody here always agreed (and those who don't just go ahead and leave), then you've lost the most interesting part of Slashdot. The Linux zealots rant and rave about how a monoculture in the OS market will cause major problems. How is this not the same, then? You're advocating that those who don't always agree with Slashdot's editorial policy should just go away. You're in favor of creating a monoculture here, and that will be the death of Slashdot.
You're right. If Slashdot fails, too bad. However, it won't be because of people like me who filter the ads. Instead, it will be a slow rot from within. It's already evident with the increasing number of trolls and flamebait. It's evident in the greater number of blatant trolls that have been accepted as user submissions. It's obvious in the fact that even the editors can't keep in sync with each other. Dare I say it, but it's even obvious in the fact that CmdrTaco doesn't even have enough self respect to spell check and grammar check the writings he does for a living. Were he just another AC or random poster, then who cares? But he's not. He's the head honcho, and a prominent editor. It's pretty revealing about his character that he doesn't even bother to do such a simple thing before submitting an article (oh no, that's going to make the article 10 minutes late! oh, wait, it's already three days late, big deal...).
I think the main issue is that they don't give a shit whether or not you approve and if you don't like it you're free to not read.
And yet, I'm sure they'd love it if I (and others) would subscribe to their new for-pay model. They can't stay unprofitable forever. Eventually, VA Software will really find themselves in a bind and will have to offload or kill their unprofitable branches, which I would expect would include Slashdot. Thus, it's in Slashdot's best interests to get their frequent visitors to pay money. However, aside from the few fanatics and zealots, I doubt you're going to see a large number of people paying money to Slashdot if they don't significantly enhance the value of their site. Yes, I know, the value of Slashdot is not the stories, but the user-submitted comments. I agree with that, to an extent, but I also believe that the stories are what drive the comments. With the current status quo of subtle (and blatant!) trolls, repeat stories, late stories, chronic database problems (the about-once-daily "can't login" problems), and atrocious spelling and grammar, the site rates as little more than an amateur news clearinghouse (albeit it with a large following). I think the clearinghouse model is a good one, as that way I don't have to traipse all over the net to find the stories that would interest me. However, I damned well won't be paying a dime until the quality issues are resolved (while at the same time not feeling bad about blocking their ads, either). If they increase the quality somewhat (say, Taco takes a remedial English writing course, or the editors finally get in sync and stop duplicating stories), I'll happily unblock ads on Slashdot. If they don't get their acts together and act like true professionals (includes editing user submissions for spelling, grammar, and unnecessary inflammatory comments), they'll never see a subscription fee out of me.
And yes, I realize I can simply not read Slashdot. That's a perfectly valid option, and if it gets much worse I'll probably do just that. Right now, I still think the site has potential, and can be saved if the guys get their arses in gear and do their jobs.
I agree with you about that being childish, but its worth noting that italicized text in the stories on the front page are all from the submitter. Editor comments -always- appear as non-italicized text. Its definitely silly that the poster stuck that in there, but I do have a level of respect for Slashdot not messing with submission commentary. IMHO its best that they leave it verbatim.
See, the title "editor" implies that the person wearing that title actually edits. They're under no contractual obligation to provide the submitter's full post. Had the submitter pulled something equally as stupid, like putting profanity in his submission, I'm sure the so-called "editors" would've sanitized that (it doesn't look professional to have profanity on your front page). On high-volume submissions, they could just take their pick of the hundreds of similar submissions. This isn't one of those. This is an author pimping out his article. It's very unlikely there would be multiple submissions for this, so the editors have three choices:
Leave the submission as-is and just post it. They chose to do this.
Just take the links from the submission and summarize in their own editorial words.
Cut the flamebait from the submission, leaving the important content intact. This is what they should've chosen.
Go whine all you want about "freedom of speech" (you're guaranteed to be able to say what you want, but you're not necessarily guaranteed an audience), but if the editors are going to call themselves editors, then they need to learn how to edit. To leave such an obvious troll in the submission smacks of amateurism. The Slashdot eds have been doing this long enough that they should know better.
The word "Telco" is generally meant to be a shortening of the phrase "Telephone company", and traditionally refers to the companies that provide the service for telephones. The companies that make the phones would most precisely be called "Telephone manufacturing companies". While I can see your case for calling them "Telcos" as well, that's not the common use for the term.
"...from major Telco companies like NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Kyocera, Samsung and Sony Ericsson." what about smaller telco companies, like midwest wireless?
Since when were Panasonic, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, etc telcos? These are the companies that make the handsets. They are not the companies that run the networks the phones are programmed to use. That'd be Verizon, Sprint, Cingular, etc. In short, Midwest Wireless doesn't fit in here, because they provide service and resell these phones. They don't make the phones. The AC that submitted the story is an idiot.
Nice effect. I wouldn't have thought one could have a fixed background image under a moving foreground, and have the image changed by the moving foreground. Wild. I have to look up CSS one of these days..
That's not possible, because that's not what the page is doing. It's a neat optical illusion, but all the site is doing is attaching a fixed background (shifted to match the real background) to a non <body> element. The interior image is just the shell under a frosted glass layer (simple Photoshop stuff), the <body> background is just the shell itself. When you scroll the interior element, it just looks like frosted glass moving over the shell. Check out the real image here. The darker bands are also separate, fixed images.
Neat stuff, but not quite as fancy as you think it is.
tabbed browsing: Will Microsoft really do this? In Office, they give you the possibility to display all your open documents in the system tray - I can't even turn it off! And if they do this: how long will it take them? Until IE6.5? This won't last for long as an advantage for Mozilla and Opera
Microsoft added tabs in Visual Studio.NET, which allows you to browse the web inside your IDE (nice for those times when you have to hit MSDN, but don't want to pull up IE), as well as in the help viewer (MSDN on disk, VS.NET help, and a tabbed web browser, all in one). Thus, it seems that it would be trivial for them to add this into IE7. I don't know if it will be, but it seems that tabbed browsing is becoming more and more popular, and I doubt MSFT would miss that. As for the SDI/multiple docs interface Office has, in the past you've been able to revert to an MDI format. I haven't really used anything from Office except Outlook, lately, so I don't know if that's still an available option in Office XP. I'd expect it is, you just have to dig.
popup-blocking: hmm... I don't see them doing this either. They have probably lots of bindings with commercial sites that use pop-up ads, and don't want to lose this. So my idea is that they wont do this, and follow the idea the ReplayTV and TiVO guys say: blocking ads is stealing
Microsoft won't be doing this, but there's nothing stopping you from doing it instead. Internet Explorer has a very powerful extension mechanism via COM. <pimpage> Try NoPopIE for example. </pimpage> Think of it as the same way that Netscape will not support blocking pop-ups, while mozilla does -- IE doesn't do it, but you can get an extension that does.
stability: I don't use IE very often, but I think they are getting better and better. One problem (certainly in my Win98, don't know about others): if it goes down, it takes everything with it. Kinda selfish, not?
That's mostly a function of the OS, rather than the browser. Netscape has been known to kill Win9x, as well. Try Windows 2000 or Windows XP for a much more robust and stable experience.
Overall, I agree with your assessment as to why people like IE. I like IE. It's a very good browser, imho. Yeah, sure, I can download mozilla and use that instead, but why should I bother when I already have IE? I keep a version of mozilla around just to periodically check my web sites to make sure they don't look like crap in Mozilla, but otherwise I use IE all the time.
We dun wanna see stupid pop-up ads, and MS has a vested interest in NOT providing a feature to remove them.
Microsoft may have an interest in not providing that feature, but what they did provide was a very robust and powerful plugin interface (you can easily write Browser Helper Objects (BHOs), which are basically COM objects that IE can load and which can do a whole heck of a lot).
<shamelss_pimpage>I wrote a popup killer for Internet Explorer, and IMHO it has a lot more features than Mozilla (it's still in development, so it doesn't catch everything yet, but it's getting there). Check my sig, or find NoPopIE here. </shameless_pimpage>
Right now, it only works on Win2K and XP, but that's only because those are the platforms I have available for testing. It should work on NT4 just fine, I just haven't tested it. It won't work on win9x, because I build it with UNICODE support. I could just as easily build without UNICODE support, but that may introduce problems I can't easily test (no Win9x here). Given sufficient prompting, I'm sure I could find a way to make it work on win9x (probably 98 and up, 95 is dead).
Desktop for the visually impaired
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I really hope those screenshots are from desktops from people with visual impairments, because otherwise everything is way too damn big. The fonts are huge, the toolbars are even bigger. People talk about XP's Luna interface wasting screen space, but it's nowhere near as bad as those screenshots.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's all adjustable (well, the fonts anyway. the toolbars probably aren't so adjustable), but even so, I'd hope GNOME doesn't want to put itself forward as a huge screen real estate hog. Most people prefer a lean, trim, unobtrusive interface when trying to actually get some work done, which those screenshots definitely are not.
"Make music available for a low price ($1 per song) and we'll buy it! We don't want to rip them off, but we're sick of paying $16 for a CD!!!"
You know, at an average of perhaps 12 tracks per CD (maybe slightly higher, I haven't bought any of the so-called "popular" music in a while, and the CDs I do buy actually tend to average around 14-16 tracks per CD), that makes the per-song price of a CD not much more than $1.00. The only advantage of getting the single songs is that you don't end up paying for songs you don't want. That's a shame, though, because it's been my experience that when you get sick of the over-played radio songs on a CD, and assuming the artist is any good, you'll usually find a few gems among the other tracks as well.
What does "gone gold" mean anyway? I thought it ment that the game hit store shelves.
"Gone gold" means that the master copy of the CD (traditionally a gold CD, though that's not always the case, but that's where the "gold" part comes from) has been shipped to manufacturing, which will press the first run of CDs over the next couple of days/weeks (depending on the production capacity and the size of the run). This is also called "RTM" or "Release to Manufacturing" (interestingly, when no manufacturing is involved, this is often changed to "RTW" or "Release to Web"). Once manufacturing is done, the game is then "Shipped", which means that the game has been shipped to retailers, and possibly direct-order pre-orders if such a facility was set up. This means that when a piece of software "goes gold", you will generally be able to buy it between a couple weeks and a month or more later.
That's the traditional definition of "going gold". However, an increasing trend is to replace the term "shipped" with "gone gold", in that when a game "goes gold", it'll be on the store shelves almost immediately. This is wrong, but oh well. Unless you're French, you can't stop the progress of language.
The term "Gone gold" does not imply shipping, only that the master copy (the "gold copy") of the CD(s) has been pressed, and is ready to be sent to manufacturing for replication (referred to as "RTM", or "Release to Manufacturing"). "Ship" means that it has actually left manufacturing and is on its ways to the stores. There is a definite time lag between "Gone gold" and "Shipped", usually at least a week, often more like a month. If somebody tells you XXX just "went gold", and it's already in the stores, then it "went gold" probably 2+ weeks ago, and "shipped" a few days ago.
Unfortunately, too many people misuse the phrase "Gone gold", so it's now synonymous with "Shipped". It should mean something different, but such is the way of the ever-evolving English language.
Wow! What a polite person. I wonder what you're doing on Slashdot?:) (to butcher an IRC quote from years ago...) Anyway, interesting discussion, and I agree that in the future what you've suggested may happen. I'm not saying don't be vigilant, just don't get too caught up in the cloak&dagger stuff to the point where you confuse conspiracy with reality.
Slashdot Mirror
See the part where I said
and extrapolate from that what you will. IE, it's taken Linux a long time to build up marketing steam; it could've gone faster had Linus actually marketed the kernel (of course, he wrote it originally just for his own use, not to take over the world, so of course he didn't do any marketing); Linux was a bit of a fluke, since I doubt you can really come up with another such example in the computing world; or any other conclusion you wish to draw.Marketing isn't a silver bullet, of course. Just because you take the time to evangelize your work doesn't mean anybody's going to buy into it. But not evangelizing (note that, as other posters have pointed out, marketing is a whole lot more than just buying advertisements, and I think evangelizing is a good word to cover more of this because it includes things like helping our your developer community and just generally making sure people know what cool stuff you're doing) is a very good way to not go anywhere.
And here's a version where you can actually read who's saying what.
http://www.daishar.com/obosolog.php
And yet, that doesn't decrease or remove the need for marketing. Instead, it simply changes who your marketing is targetting. Do you think distributions of OpenBeOS will just appear? Maybe that happened with Linux, but it took a very long time (as measured in computer time, since it's only been a little over 10 years now). No, if the OBOS team wants their software to be used, then they will need to either distribute it themselves (market to end users), or actively find others to distribute it for them (market to VARs). If they do neither, then OBOS will die. And maybe that's fine, because perhaps they're just doing this for fun and their own personal use and it doesn't really matter to them whether or not others use their software.
Of course the concepts and theory that make a good admin are universal. However, 90% of running a system is hands-on work (quick fixes, kludges, and hacks to keep the system up and running without munging it up too much, and then doing things the "Right Way" (tm) when you finally get the time). That's where the difference comes in. Just to illustrate the difference, let's examine how you'd push a security patch to 100 nodes in a network. With Unix, that's easy -- just write a script that goes through each host, making an ssh connection that runs another script to load the patch. Now, how do you do this on Windows? Your typical Unix admin will do one of two things when presented with this problem on a Windows-based network.
- The admin will go to each and every computer and run the patch there. This is highly inefficient, and prone to error (you're sure you got all the machines?).
- Start turning Windows into Unix. The admin will install bash, perl, ssh, etc until he can use the same method as above -- write a shell script that runs through each machine making an ssh connection that calls a script to load the patch. Of course, now you've got a whole lot of non-essential software on (possibly) production servers. That software could have security holes (ssh), or be untested on your certain configuration of hardware, or introduce software conflicts, or cause any one of several hundred different problems.
The thing is, there is a solution to this problem that combines the elegance of the Unix-style solution with the stability (ie, not screwing around with your software configuration) of the first option. Simply write a vbscript or jscript that uses WMI (Windows Management Interface) to connect to each remote machine, copy over the patch, and run it. WMI is native to Windows, so you're not adding extra software, and it was designed specificially for these types of administrative tasks.The above example may be contrived, but the point is that the Unix admin wouldn't know the tricks of the trade for administering a Windows server. Conversely, your average Windows admin will be lost when delving into bash, perl, sed, awk, and the myriad of other small scriptable apps. (Not saying that most Windows admins are not good at scripting, just that vbscript/jscript/command script are different from bash/perl/sed/awk/tcl)
If you're able to afford an admin that is proficient with any system you give him, then more power to you. Those types are worth their weight in gold. For the rest of the world that either can't afford such talent or came late to the party and can't find such talent, you take what you can get. And I find it pretty short-sighted to say that an admin is faulty if he's targetted a certain platform. He may have all the theory behind proper administration down just fine, but when it comes to putting food on the table you have to make a decision and pick a platform (or two, or five, but rarely will you be able to be instantly proficient with everything).
In short, you don't have a qualified Windows administrator on your staff. Yes, there is a difference. A Unix admin does not necessarily make a good Windows admin, and vice versa.
So, what's your URL again? Your system is most likely quite vulnerable, security-wise. No, rebooting does not equal security, nor is it necessary to reboot for many security fixes. However, there have been a number of holes fixed in the kernel itself over the past year or two, and you do have to reboot for that. And if you're not staying on top of your kernel security updates, are you sure you're staying on top of your other security updates as well ... ?
Sure, you'll believe that up until the point where MySQL finally hacks SQL-based sprocs into their little database, and then you'll love it. You might want to sync up with the MySQL dev team, so that you'll know when they're ready to implement SQL-based sprocs so you can change your argument.
First off, let's just throw away 20+ years of database research (both academic and commercial from places like Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft). Obviously you know better, it seems. However, that aside, of course most transaction implementations "waste memory" (if you're going to be running a serious database, you won't have any problems getting 2 or 3GB of RAM). That memory they "waste" is used basically as a scratch space. All data manipulations are done there, so that when you get that commit tran call it can all be written to disk. Or just as easily thrown away when you have to rollback tran. Yes, that can get nasty when you're doing large updates, or have a long transaction. That's the point where it helps to understand how the database you're using actually works, because then you can work on making your code perform better. As far as transactions causing data corruption ... well, not that I've seen. Maybe with MySQL, because their transaction support is just a hack, and it's still pretty flakey and new. I wouldn't judge transactions in any other real RDBMS by MySQL's transactions.
No, it's not. Not even close. With a passenger in the car, he or she has the same view of the road as the driver. Therefore, if a situation arises where the driver needs full concentration (and you'd be surprised how often this happens, what with soccer moms in their oversized SUVs and idiots talking on their phones ...), the passenger can shut up. The person on the other end of the phone has no clue, and will just continue to babble on and on, distracting the driver and causing a dangerous situation. There's more to driving than just having your hands free for the wheel and shifter (if necessary). To be a good driver, you must have situational awareness. You need to not only know where the other drivers are on the road in relation to your car, but you also need to be able to anticipate what they're going to do. How can you do that if you're chatting up somebody on the phone, talking about where to go to dinner or what movie to see later? Simple -- you can't. Anybody who says you can is either an idiot or a liar.
Don't get me wrong. I don't subscribe to the Liberal battlecry of "There should be a law!" I'm not saying there should be a law against talking on a phone while driving (although there already are such laws in some areas). All I'm saying is that for your own safety and mine, please keep the phone conversations to non-moving situations please.
That's a feature, not a problem. When you're driving, pay attention to driving. Stay off the goddamned phone. If you want to talk to your brother, call him before you leave work. Then go drive home. Then call him again if you must. But for the sake of the other drivers that need to share the road with you, leave the damned phone off while you're driving.
I don't care if you use a hands-free set, you're still gabbing on the phone when you should be paying attention to what you're doing on the road. When you're driving, you're in possession of a 3000lb bullet. Please act accordingly. And don't give me excuses like, "But I've been doing this for years!" or, "I'm a good driver, so I don't have to pay attention to the road." That's crap, and both you and I know it.
Go update your drivers. Your system should be able to handle at least fullscreen 1024x768x32 Geiss or Whitecap or other 3D visualizations. Also, if you're talking about AVS, try not using the transparency option (that takes computing power, though if you've updated your drivers, the alpha blending should be handled mostly in hardware anyway).
Please don't make the assumption that Windows is the reason your system is slow with graphically intense applications. Most visualizations are not a whole lot of computation (Winamp pre-calculates the fourier transforms on the dataset sent to vis plugins, so the plugins themselves need not do so).
This is exactly what I do, as well. My latest machine (working as a dhcpd and nat router for an internal wireless LAN) is nearly all "recycled" parts. Other than the RAM, case, and floppy, everything in the computer is left over from upgrades. Works out very well, and at the rate I upgrade I usually end up with another PC every 1.5 years.
I couldn't imagine anybody running a serious service would actually want to build their own machines. It's too much work, and you give up your support agreement. Obviously, if you need big iron, then you have some form of income to pay for it (or if not, it'll eventually get sold at auction when you buckle). Sure, it's possible to build server-level PCs (Supermicro makes some awesome cases -- I use the old SC750A full tower just for a personal machine, but it could be considered a small server case), but most companies want that support contract. That way, when you lose a drive in your RAID array, or a controller burns out, or a CPU gets fried, or whatever, it's all covered (yeah, yeah, you pay for it in the price of the service agreement, but you get a lot more than just replacement parts with a service agreement, as well).
Building your own PC is not always the least expensive proposition. Most configurable, yes, but not least expensive. For starters, all of the prebuilt PC manufacturers get huge bulk discounts. If you want to go buy that P4, it may cost you well over $400 or even $500. These guys can buy in bulks of 10,000 or more, which means significant price drops. Same for the motherboards, cases, power supplies, RAM, ... You're not going to be able to match the prices these companies can get. On top of that, if you're building your own PC, you're probably going to want to put quality parts in it. Don't expect that from a prebuilt company. They skimp where they can (weaker powersupply, flimsy case, off-brand sound card, etc) so they can pass the savings on to you while still making some sort of profit. Nevermind the software you have to buy (assuming you want to run Windows or some other commercial OS and don't wish to steal it). You can sometimes get the OEM discounts on the software if you buy it in conjunction with a mobo or hard drive, but not always.
In short, if price is a concern, don't build it yourself. Oh, sure, with a little due dilligence you can keep the price down. It's just been my experience that that doesn't happen. If you're pinching pennies, buy from a respectable name brand. If you want the ultimate in configuration (and don't mind having no computer-wide warranty support), then build it yourself.
So basically, love it or leave it? I'm sorry, but I believe in a third option -- constructive criticism. And that's exactly what I gave. Too bad the editors will likely never see it. As I said, I feel there's definitely something worth saving in Slashdot, and you can't honestly believe that the changes I suggested wouldn't be better than what you currently get. I'm fine with Slashdot editorializing, and I know there are obvious biases. However, there is a time and place for those. There was absolutely no reason for the underhanded dig in this story. If Slashdot wants to run an editorial (user-submitted or otherwise) about what's wrong with Microsoft (or the RIAA/MPAA, or the government, or whatever), great. That's an editorial. It's supposed to have bias. This was presented as a news item ("Hey, look! Neat article. Oh, and since the article does cast Microsoft in a somewhat favorable light, here's a completely unrelated dig to fulfill the status quo,"). As such, it is the Slashdot editors' editorial duty to lose the troll and present the news.
Dissenting viewpoints are what can turn an only decent community into a truly great one. If everybody here always agreed (and those who don't just go ahead and leave), then you've lost the most interesting part of Slashdot. The Linux zealots rant and rave about how a monoculture in the OS market will cause major problems. How is this not the same, then? You're advocating that those who don't always agree with Slashdot's editorial policy should just go away. You're in favor of creating a monoculture here, and that will be the death of Slashdot.
You're right. If Slashdot fails, too bad. However, it won't be because of people like me who filter the ads. Instead, it will be a slow rot from within. It's already evident with the increasing number of trolls and flamebait. It's evident in the greater number of blatant trolls that have been accepted as user submissions. It's obvious in the fact that even the editors can't keep in sync with each other. Dare I say it, but it's even obvious in the fact that CmdrTaco doesn't even have enough self respect to spell check and grammar check the writings he does for a living. Were he just another AC or random poster, then who cares? But he's not. He's the head honcho, and a prominent editor. It's pretty revealing about his character that he doesn't even bother to do such a simple thing before submitting an article (oh no, that's going to make the article 10 minutes late! oh, wait, it's already three days late, big deal ...).
And yet, I'm sure they'd love it if I (and others) would subscribe to their new for-pay model. They can't stay unprofitable forever. Eventually, VA Software will really find themselves in a bind and will have to offload or kill their unprofitable branches, which I would expect would include Slashdot. Thus, it's in Slashdot's best interests to get their frequent visitors to pay money. However, aside from the few fanatics and zealots, I doubt you're going to see a large number of people paying money to Slashdot if they don't significantly enhance the value of their site. Yes, I know, the value of Slashdot is not the stories, but the user-submitted comments. I agree with that, to an extent, but I also believe that the stories are what drive the comments. With the current status quo of subtle (and blatant!) trolls, repeat stories, late stories, chronic database problems (the about-once-daily "can't login" problems), and atrocious spelling and grammar, the site rates as little more than an amateur news clearinghouse (albeit it with a large following). I think the clearinghouse model is a good one, as that way I don't have to traipse all over the net to find the stories that would interest me. However, I damned well won't be paying a dime until the quality issues are resolved (while at the same time not feeling bad about blocking their ads, either). If they increase the quality somewhat (say, Taco takes a remedial English writing course, or the editors finally get in sync and stop duplicating stories), I'll happily unblock ads on Slashdot. If they don't get their acts together and act like true professionals (includes editing user submissions for spelling, grammar, and unnecessary inflammatory comments), they'll never see a subscription fee out of me.
And yes, I realize I can simply not read Slashdot. That's a perfectly valid option, and if it gets much worse I'll probably do just that. Right now, I still think the site has potential, and can be saved if the guys get their arses in gear and do their jobs.
See, the title "editor" implies that the person wearing that title actually edits. They're under no contractual obligation to provide the submitter's full post. Had the submitter pulled something equally as stupid, like putting profanity in his submission, I'm sure the so-called "editors" would've sanitized that (it doesn't look professional to have profanity on your front page). On high-volume submissions, they could just take their pick of the hundreds of similar submissions. This isn't one of those. This is an author pimping out his article. It's very unlikely there would be multiple submissions for this, so the editors have three choices:
Go whine all you want about "freedom of speech" (you're guaranteed to be able to say what you want, but you're not necessarily guaranteed an audience), but if the editors are going to call themselves editors, then they need to learn how to edit. To leave such an obvious troll in the submission smacks of amateurism. The Slashdot eds have been doing this long enough that they should know better.
The word "Telco" is generally meant to be a shortening of the phrase "Telephone company", and traditionally refers to the companies that provide the service for telephones. The companies that make the phones would most precisely be called "Telephone manufacturing companies". While I can see your case for calling them "Telcos" as well, that's not the common use for the term.
Since when were Panasonic, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, etc telcos? These are the companies that make the handsets. They are not the companies that run the networks the phones are programmed to use. That'd be Verizon, Sprint, Cingular, etc. In short, Midwest Wireless doesn't fit in here, because they provide service and resell these phones. They don't make the phones. The AC that submitted the story is an idiot.
That's not possible, because that's not what the page is doing. It's a neat optical illusion, but all the site is doing is attaching a fixed background (shifted to match the real background) to a non <body> element. The interior image is just the shell under a frosted glass layer (simple Photoshop stuff), the <body> background is just the shell itself. When you scroll the interior element, it just looks like frosted glass moving over the shell. Check out the real image here. The darker bands are also separate, fixed images.
Neat stuff, but not quite as fancy as you think it is.
Microsoft added tabs in Visual Studio.NET, which allows you to browse the web inside your IDE (nice for those times when you have to hit MSDN, but don't want to pull up IE), as well as in the help viewer (MSDN on disk, VS.NET help, and a tabbed web browser, all in one). Thus, it seems that it would be trivial for them to add this into IE7. I don't know if it will be, but it seems that tabbed browsing is becoming more and more popular, and I doubt MSFT would miss that. As for the SDI/multiple docs interface Office has, in the past you've been able to revert to an MDI format. I haven't really used anything from Office except Outlook, lately, so I don't know if that's still an available option in Office XP. I'd expect it is, you just have to dig.
Microsoft won't be doing this, but there's nothing stopping you from doing it instead. Internet Explorer has a very powerful extension mechanism via COM. <pimpage> Try NoPopIE for example. </pimpage> Think of it as the same way that Netscape will not support blocking pop-ups, while mozilla does -- IE doesn't do it, but you can get an extension that does.
That's mostly a function of the OS, rather than the browser. Netscape has been known to kill Win9x, as well. Try Windows 2000 or Windows XP for a much more robust and stable experience.
Overall, I agree with your assessment as to why people like IE. I like IE. It's a very good browser, imho. Yeah, sure, I can download mozilla and use that instead, but why should I bother when I already have IE? I keep a version of mozilla around just to periodically check my web sites to make sure they don't look like crap in Mozilla, but otherwise I use IE all the time.
Microsoft may have an interest in not providing that feature, but what they did provide was a very robust and powerful plugin interface (you can easily write Browser Helper Objects (BHOs), which are basically COM objects that IE can load and which can do a whole heck of a lot).
<shamelss_pimpage>I wrote a popup killer for Internet Explorer, and IMHO it has a lot more features than Mozilla (it's still in development, so it doesn't catch everything yet, but it's getting there). Check my sig, or find NoPopIE here. </shameless_pimpage>
Right now, it only works on Win2K and XP, but that's only because those are the platforms I have available for testing. It should work on NT4 just fine, I just haven't tested it. It won't work on win9x, because I build it with UNICODE support. I could just as easily build without UNICODE support, but that may introduce problems I can't easily test (no Win9x here). Given sufficient prompting, I'm sure I could find a way to make it work on win9x (probably 98 and up, 95 is dead).
I really hope those screenshots are from desktops from people with visual impairments, because otherwise everything is way too damn big. The fonts are huge, the toolbars are even bigger. People talk about XP's Luna interface wasting screen space, but it's nowhere near as bad as those screenshots.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's all adjustable (well, the fonts anyway. the toolbars probably aren't so adjustable), but even so, I'd hope GNOME doesn't want to put itself forward as a huge screen real estate hog. Most people prefer a lean, trim, unobtrusive interface when trying to actually get some work done, which those screenshots definitely are not.
You know, at an average of perhaps 12 tracks per CD (maybe slightly higher, I haven't bought any of the so-called "popular" music in a while, and the CDs I do buy actually tend to average around 14-16 tracks per CD), that makes the per-song price of a CD not much more than $1.00. The only advantage of getting the single songs is that you don't end up paying for songs you don't want. That's a shame, though, because it's been my experience that when you get sick of the over-played radio songs on a CD, and assuming the artist is any good, you'll usually find a few gems among the other tracks as well.
"Gone gold" means that the master copy of the CD (traditionally a gold CD, though that's not always the case, but that's where the "gold" part comes from) has been shipped to manufacturing, which will press the first run of CDs over the next couple of days/weeks (depending on the production capacity and the size of the run). This is also called "RTM" or "Release to Manufacturing" (interestingly, when no manufacturing is involved, this is often changed to "RTW" or "Release to Web"). Once manufacturing is done, the game is then "Shipped", which means that the game has been shipped to retailers, and possibly direct-order pre-orders if such a facility was set up. This means that when a piece of software "goes gold", you will generally be able to buy it between a couple weeks and a month or more later.
That's the traditional definition of "going gold". However, an increasing trend is to replace the term "shipped" with "gone gold", in that when a game "goes gold", it'll be on the store shelves almost immediately. This is wrong, but oh well. Unless you're French, you can't stop the progress of language.
The term "Gone gold" does not imply shipping, only that the master copy (the "gold copy") of the CD(s) has been pressed, and is ready to be sent to manufacturing for replication (referred to as "RTM", or "Release to Manufacturing"). "Ship" means that it has actually left manufacturing and is on its ways to the stores. There is a definite time lag between "Gone gold" and "Shipped", usually at least a week, often more like a month. If somebody tells you XXX just "went gold", and it's already in the stores, then it "went gold" probably 2+ weeks ago, and "shipped" a few days ago.
Unfortunately, too many people misuse the phrase "Gone gold", so it's now synonymous with "Shipped". It should mean something different, but such is the way of the ever-evolving English language.
So why, then, could you install IE5 without first installing IE4? Try it.
Wow! What a polite person. I wonder what you're doing on Slashdot? :) (to butcher an IRC quote from years ago ...) Anyway, interesting discussion, and I agree that in the future what you've suggested may happen. I'm not saying don't be vigilant, just don't get too caught up in the cloak&dagger stuff to the point where you confuse conspiracy with reality.